FAT16 faster than FAT32 for a small partition (390MB)?

[Noriaki]

I have a 30Gig 75GXP, and I'm going to get a 45Gig as well.
I am going to install games/apps/OS on the 45gig, and the 30gig will be mp3s and other files...but I'm also going to put my Virtual memory on the 30Gig so I'm going to make a small 390MB partition at the front of the drive for a 384MB swap file.

My question is, will this swap partition run faster if I make it FAT16 instead of FAT32? Or is FAT32 faster. I've heard both...

 

[Chadder007]

Actually windows won't let you partition anything less that 500 megs with FAT32. Also FAT16 is indeed faster for a partition that is small. FAT32 just saves space on the larger drives and partitions, it isn't faster though....some would argue.

 

[Noriaki]

Windows won't let you use FAT32 for partition smaller than 500MB? Hmm didn't know that...I don't think Partition Magic complained...

Thanks for the response...I'll keep it FAT16 then I guess.

 

[divinemartyr]

I wasn't aware of the 500mb rule either, but don't have much experience partitioning out drives, I just leave them like they are, ehhe.... FAT16 is indeed faster, as FAT32 uses some form of compression to store your files and give you additional space. Any time you start compressing files you are going to lose performance.

divinemartyr

 

[Sunner]

Its not compression.
What FAT32 does is allow for more clusters, whcih in turn allows for bigger partitions.
On a 2 GB FAT16 drive, each cluster will be 32 KB if I remember correctly, on a 2 GB FAT32 drive however, each cluster will, by default be 4 KB, again this is just if i remember correctly, but you get the idea anyway.

The end result is that you save space, but since there are more clusters to handle, you lose some performance, nothing really noticeable though.

 

[Lord Evermore]

FAT32 does not use compression. It simply uses a 32bit file system to address the space on the hard drive, allowing larger partitions. 16bit's can only count up to a certain number of clusters of a certain size (I forget the exact numbers); the limitation appears at 2GB, where FAT16 can no longer address more clusters, and also where those clusters reach the largest possible size of 32k. FAT32 increases the number of cluster addresses tremendously, so that when using 32k clusters you can address terabytes of storage space in a single partition (if it existed; imagine defragging it).

FAT32 requires a 512MB partition minimum. FAT16 is slightly faster in some ways because the FAT table is smaller with 16bit (I think), but with FAT32, Windows can track program accesses in order to rearrange data during a defrag to allow the programs to load faster.

The larger the cluster size, the fewer clusters there are in a given size partition. The fewer clusters, the less memory Windows needs to use to track them (and the faster the defrags). However with larger clusters you have more wasted space due to difference between file sizes and cluster sizes.

On an 8GB partition, I've found that 8k clusters work pretty well. 4k doubles the number of clusters, and 16k means a lot more wasted space.

 

[PowerJoe]

FAT16 is limited to 2^16 = 65,536 clusters, give or take a few
FAT32 is limited to 2^32 = 4,294,967,296 clusters, give or take a few

-PJ